Brits or Europeans might not have taken note of the ongoing strike by United Auto Workers (UAW) nor of the fact that Donald Trump has chosen to host them at a rally in Michigan instead of participating in the GOP primary debate last night – just a day after president Joe Biden had joined the workers on the picket line near Detroit.
Yet the strike’s relevance lies not only in Michigan’s central place in America’s complicated electoral politics. It is also a harbinger of political battles as the Western world, and Europe in particular, transition to electric mobility. Most importantly, it is a warning to Europe that an overly ambitious green agenda can have unintended consequences, especially given the extraordinary size of its car industry.
Today, automobile manufacturing, an industry with a total revenue of over €500 billion (£430 billion) last year, accounts for roughly 5 per cent of Germany’s GDP and 7 per cent of its workforce – or some 800,000 workers.
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